Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2014
The purpose of this work was to study the relationship between self-focusedattention and mindfulness in participants prone to hallucinations and others whowere not. A sample of 318 healthy participants, students at the universities ofSevilla and Almería, was given the Launay-Slade HallucinationsScale-revised (LSHS-R, Bentall & Slade, 1985). Based on this sample, two groups were formed:participants with high (n = 55) and low proneness(n = 28) to hallucinations. Participants with ascore higher than a standard deviation from the mean in the LSHS-R were includedin the high proneness group, participants with a score lower than a standarddeviation from the mean in the LSHR-R were included in the second one. Allparticipants were also given the Self-Absorption Scale (SAS, McKenzie& Hoyle, 2008) and theSouthampton Mindfulness Questionnaire (SMQ, Chadwick et al., 2008). The results showed thatparticipants with high hallucination proneness had significantly higher levelsof public (t(80) = 6.81, p< .001) and private (t(77) = 7.39,p < .001) self-focused attention and lower levelsof mindfulness (t(81) = -4.56, p< .001) than participants in the group with low hallucinationproneness. A correlational analysis showed a negative association betweenself-focused attention (private and public) and mindfulness (r= -0.23, p < .001; r= -0.38, p < .001 respectively). Finally,mindfulness was found to partly mediate between self-focused attention andhallucination proneness. The importance of self-focused attention andmindfulness in understanding the etiology of hallucinations discussed andsuggest some approaches to their treatment.